Back-office services for garden centres & nurseries. Landscaping Award / Retail Award payroll, industry-specific bookkeeping, BAS and compliance.
Gardening and Landscaping Award 2020 / General Retail Industry Award 2020
Garden Centres & Nurseries have specific operational patterns and compliance requirements that generic bookkeeping services don't understand. You need back-office support from people who know your industry — the revenue models, the compliance landscape, the operational realities. Valont provides integrated finance, people, and technology operations built for retail businesses like yours.
Garden Centres & Nurseries employees are typically covered by the Gardening and Landscaping Award 2020 / General Retail Industry Award 2020.
Classification structure: Nursery Worker (Landscaping Award Level 1–5), Retail Employee (Retail Award). Award depends on primary activity.
Ordinary hours: 38 hours/week. Weekend trading essential.
Penalty rates: Standard award penalties under applicable award.
Key allowances: Pesticide/herbicide allowance, forklift allowance, first aid allowance
Getting award interpretation wrong creates systematic underpayment that compounds with every pay period. Our payroll specialists configure award-specific software to calculate every classification, penalty, and allowance correctly — and conduct quarterly audits to ensure ongoing compliance.
Running garden centres & nurseries means dealing with specific operational complexities that generic providers don't address:
Nursery industry accreditation, pesticide licence for application, biosecurity compliance for plant material, food safety (if café), and WHS for chemical handling and forklift operation.
We maintain a compliance calendar that covers both your general business obligations (BAS, STP, super, payroll tax, workers compensation) and your industry-specific requirements, ensuring nothing falls through the gap between your financial compliance and your operational compliance.
Plant stock management with mortality tracking. Seasonal purchasing and cash flow planning. Retail vs landscape services P&L separation. Café revenue integration (if applicable). Multi-award payroll where required. Nursery production cost tracking.
Landscaping Award / Retail Award-compliant payroll processing through KeyPay or Employment Hero with automated award interpretation. STP reporting with every pay run. Superannuation calculation and initiation on schedule. Ongoing payroll compliance audits. HR advisory covering employment contracts, workplace policies, onboarding, and termination processes specific to the retail sector.
Managed IT support with proactive monitoring and helpdesk. Essential Eight cybersecurity implementation. Cloud platform management (Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace). Integration management between your industry-specific systems and accounting/payroll platforms.
For a garden centre/nursery with 5–20 employees: Finance + People Hub $1,200–$2,500/month. This replaces the combined cost of a separate bookkeeper, payroll provider, and the owner's time spent on admin — typically 10 to 15 hours per week for a business of this size.
Fixed-fee, month-to-month, no lock-in. We retain clients through service quality, not contractual obligation.
Yes. Our team has direct experience with the Landscaping Award / Retail Award and the specific operational, financial, and compliance requirements of garden centres & nurseries. We configure our services around your industry's reality rather than forcing you into a generic template.
Most garden centres & nurseries employees are covered by the Gardening and Landscaping Award 2020 / General Retail Industry Award 2020. Nursery Worker (Landscaping Award Level 1–5), Retail Employee (Retail Award). Award depends on primary activity. We determine the correct award and classification for each employee during onboarding and configure payroll accordingly.
Yes. We integrate with the POS, rostering, and industry-specific platforms that garden centres & nurseries use. The Operations Hub manages all integrations — configuration during onboarding, continuous monitoring, and issue resolution.
Most garden centres & nurseries come to us with some level of backlog or disorganisation. We bring your books current during onboarding at no additional cost and establish the systems and processes that keep them current going forward.
Our Services
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